The Upside is Down.

This place is a shit hole. A better way to describe it does not exist. A fucking shit hole. It is about the size of a couple square city blocks, and it is filled with these tents that have no ventilation what so ever. Why do I bring up ventilation? I’ll get to that.

This place is testament to the failed mission in the country. There is no longer a sense of being in a war. I arrived here yesterday at about 0700 in the morning and did not see a single person, other than the smelly, dirty hadji bastard that sold me a pack of cigarettes at the helicopter landing zone. I’ll take that as a “welcome to Jelawur.” I bought my one dollar pack of cigarettes and walked down to the main part of the base. I didn’t see a single fucking person. Please remind me; we are in a war zone, right? You mean to tell me that it is almost eight in the morning and everyone is still sleeping? I managed to find the motor transport after hiking around the base with all my shit for almost forty-five minutes. I walked over to the vehicle that I was supposed to work on, dropped my shit and went off to locate the chow hall.

I followed the smell of fake eggs and other over cooked breakfast foods until finally ending up at a tent. I washed my hands and headed inside. I grabbed some food and a fake egg omelet and went to the other side of the tent hoping to find a seat. I had no problem finding one because there were maybe ten people there. My assumptions about everyone still being in bed were correct. I at my food and headed back to the motor pool to see if I could find anyone. To my surprise, there was a young soldier sitting down smoking a cigarette under the sun shade. I walked over to him and introduced myself, asking where to find the motor pool sergeant. He was still sleeping. Your should have no issue figuring out whether or not I am getting pissed at this point. It was already getting hot out, so I just wanted to do my work, and get the hell out of there. Fat chance.

The sergeant had no idea I was coming, but truth be told, I was not surprised at this fact. Basically I was to have a few soldiers help me salvage parts and get them on a pallet to be sent back to my main base. I had one soldier to help me. My day was already going exceptionally well. The kid worked hard and definitely helped me a lot, but the job required more than just two people, so we ended up busting our asses all morning. I need to mention the young female mechanic that showed up shortly after we started working. She stood there for a while and watched us work, never once offering to help. Again, no surprise. She just parked her ass on a chair and made sure I was putting the tools back in their proper locations. It’s not just her because most of the soldiers I have come across have been lazy. Thanks for the help.

We ended up getting done about ninety percent of what I needed to get done before lunch, so I was happy again. I took this time to get to know the soldiers, including the female who did a fine job supervising. She was a young girl from Washington that joined the army for the same reason a lot of young people do, and that was to get away. While I didn’t pry much, I did learn that she was not only heavy into drugs, but heavy into selling them. A bit that will either land you in jail, or dead. I think she made the right choice. She does need to improve her work ethic though because it sucks. Her sergeant is partly to blame for that. The guy that helped me was a young kid from LA who had a similar story and seemed to really like the army. He definitely busted his ass helping me out.

After lunch and working a little into the afternoon, we cleaned up and called it a day. I straightened up my pile of parts and thanked everyone for their help before heading back to my tent to pass out. I ended up falling asleep around 1500 and not waking up until around 2030. five hour nap. I then went over to the command center to find out flight times so I could get the hell out of here. The only flight was at 0500 in the morning the next day. I had remembered there were a couple of things I needed to do, so I decided to stay another day. I headed back to the tent to grab my shower shit because I was filthy.

I passed out again shortly after my shower, only to be woken up at around 0300 by a platoon of soldiers who had just come off of a mission. This is where the ventilation comes into play. While in the Marine Corps, I did my share of missions, convoys, long field ops, and the like. There were two things I looked forward to after getting off of mission or a long field op. The number one thing would be a shower. There is no better feeling than a shower after spending days, or weeks without one. Obviously the second thing would have to be a hot meal, but I think a shower tops a meal in my opinion. Clean clothes, clean body, clean bed. The best. These fucking guys decided that after they made all sorts of noise until around 0400, that they would go to sleep, shower-less. Let me explain to you what a tent full of about 30 dirty men smells like after a night. Dirty ass. Dirty, filthy, uncleaned, smelly, stank-ass is what this place smelled like when I woke up in the morning. Even though I didn’t need to, I chose to be out an about by 0730 because I could no longer take the smell. These guys will probably be out on mission again within 24 hours, so why not wash your ass? Terrible.

I went off to breakfast and ran into the soldiers from the day before. We ate, and I headed down to the motor pool to grab a couple things that I forgot. I ended up staying to help them hook up the power steering on a truck, and ended up bullshitting with them, and two new soldiers for a good part of the morning. There was a new girl that as straight out of training. I have to say, she was a little intimidating due to the fact that she was Asian, had short hair, and was built like a man and covered in tattoos. She commented on mine and we talked about ink for a while before heading to lunch. I ate lunch with the girls and the guys, then went off to the MWR to hop on the computer. It was packed. Full of idiots with nothing to do at 1400 in the afternoon, so I went to the one guy’s tent to play some Playstation. Yes, these guys have enough free time to justify buying a Playstation and a TV for their tent. That got boring pretty fast, so I went to check my email.

I had another message from this girl who likes me. A mutual friend of ours in a way, hooked us up and we have been talking for about a month now. I have to say she is acool girl. She’s sweetheart, she is cute, and I definitely like talking to her.  The issue I have is her attachment to not me, but what I am. My being a former Marine and combat veteran is so fascinating to her that it has become an issue with me. She is a very nice girl, but I feel like I am suffocating when I talk to her. She doesn’t always say it, but it seems that the only thing on her mind is me coming home to be with her. I recently by chance read that my ex girlfriend said I came to Afghanistan because I have separation issues with my leaving the military. A lot of that is true, sad, but true. I miss it. I miss a lot about it, mostly the fact that I was doing something to make a difference in the world.

My point in all of this is that I do not plan on coming back next year. If I have a job, an opportunity to continue to make this money out here in Afghanistan, I am going to stay, no questions asked. The girl that likes me doesn’t seem to understand this, nor does she seem to care that I plan on doing things that I want to do for the time being. I spent almost three years of my life doing for someone else while putting aside what I wanted to do. I feel like this girl likes what I have done, what I am doing, and what I used to be, not who I am. The last eight years of my life, and the things I have done and experienced have certainly shaped me into the person I am, but there is more to me than my experiences in the military and combat. I feel like she she only sees or cares about my experiences, not who I have become because of those experiences. I don’t dislike her, in fact, it is the opposite. She is a very nice girl, and a good person, but I have a problem with the way she thinks of me. I hope we can both figure it out because she is a good friend.

Enough about that. Now I must gripe about the past. I am sitting here in this tent, dwelling on what my ex girlfriend said about me. Maybe she is right. Maybe this is the only place where I will ever truly be okay and feel normal. Who knows, maybe she is completely out of her fucking mind. All I know is there is nothing back home for me. What little life I had left after her, was thrown in a U-Haul truck, and is sitting in a 10x10 storage place near my dad’s house. There is nothing there for me any more. I realize now that maybe this is what I was meant for, at least for a while. I am good at what I do, I enjoy my job, and I am fine with being out here. Sometimes I find myself looking to the future and thinking about going to school a few years from now, having a house in Philly, going out with friends, being a writer, who knows. I have come to understand that there are very few certainties in this life. I thought I had it all figured out. I truly, deeply loved Madison with every ounce of my being. I have never felt for another person the way I felt for her, and I can only hope one day I will be able to open those gates once again and share that with someone new. I can only hope that I don’t make the same mistakes that I did with her because I know that I had a lot to do with why everything fell the fuck apart.

All we can do is get up, brush the dirt off, and keep moving forward. I am home. For now, this will remain my home. I definitely don’t mean this shit hole Jelawur, but Afghanistan, metaphorically speaking of course.

Don’t worry, I am sure I will find something else to bitch about soon, or maybe some more guts to spill, but for now…

Have you ever been to a combat zone? I am about to go out on a limb here and say something that may seem a little bit crazy. Afghanistan is like one big city. No, I do not mean that the entire expanse of Afghanistan consists of one big city that spans border to border. What I mean is that this place could be compared to a city like Philadelphia, or New York when talking about the geographical diversity of the country. Again, you are probably wondering what the hell I am talking about. In an American city, the scenery, architecture, people, and businesses all change almost block to block. Take Philadelphia for example. You have South Philly, Old City, Northern Liberties, and Fishtown, to name a few. These neighborhoods are generally so distinct from one another, that sometimes this change is block to block.

He is comparing the neighborhoods of Philadelphia, to Afghanistan.

Yes, I am, and here is a little explanation.

Think of how in the city, you can walk just a few blocks, and be surrounded by an entirely new culture, or architecture than you were before. That is what it is like out here. Bases that are just miles apart are so different from one another. I am currently at Forward Observation Base Sharana, outside of the city of Sharana. My main base, Kandahar, is situated on very flat land outside of a huge city, while this base is on top of very hilly terrain, and surrounded by mountains and valleys. The weather is entirely different as well. During the day, the temperature is in the high ninety’s and it drops to well within the seventy degree region. There are nice breezes during the night that almost suggest a hooded sweatshirt. The base itself is far more spread out, and definitely has a vastly smaller amount of military and civilian personnel than Kandahar, obviously making it quieter and more pleasant.

When I say that these places are like different neighborhoods in a giant city, I mean it. Every place I have been so far has had a different look, and feel, and the people are different too. It almost makes the different trips exciting because since most of the time I am traveling to places that I have never been, it leaves everything open for a surprise.

Getting back on track, I left Kandahar to head to Sharana Friday, August 27^th. My first stop would be Bagram Air Field, or “BAF,” but there are plenty of things to tell before I discuss Bagram. The “show time” for the flight to BAF was 0900. A guy that just came off of leave and I headed over to the terminal to get checked in for the flight. I should not have to remind you all, but this is a military base located in a combat zone. With that being said, I believe this would be a good time to explain how I had to take my knife out of my pocket, and put it in my carry-on. So let us talk about this for a second. Not only do I have to remove my knife from my pocket to fly on a C-130, but I was instructed to store it in my backpack for the duration of the flight. Yes, this is the same backpack that will be carried on my back, onto the plane, and set in front of me on the deck, thus placing said knife within my reach. Not only am I a US Army contractor, but until 8 days ago, I was technically still a US Marine. Absolutely hilarious.

So now that we have taken care of my being in possession of a sweet Boker Knives automatic knife at the PAX terminal, we can continue. The show time of 0900 is similar to a normal flight in the states as far as the reasoning being ensuring that everything is in order, big bags are palletized, and they can manifest you onto the flight. This flight was supposed to roll out at around 1100. We left at 1400. Yes, we sat there for five hours waiting for the damn plane. Needless to say, five hours, nine bottles of water, and no food later, we were finally on the C-130 en-route to BAF.

I did not spend a lot of time in Bagram because we arrived shortly before 1600 and the show time for our flight to Sharana was at 1715. From what I am told, Bagram and Kandahar share quite a few similarities as far as its size, and the amount of personnel that occupy the base, which is somewhere near 30,000. Yes, there are literally that many military personnel, contractors, DoD, and TCN’s (third country nationals) on that base. It is pretty crazy to think that there are cities in the United States that have a smaller population than a base in a war-torn country such as Afghanistan. Many of the higher ranking military personnel are based out of Bagram, so it is not exactly the best place to be in my opinion.

Our first order of business, aside from signing up for our flight to Sharana, was getting something to eat. Up until this point in our day, we had not eaten and had been surviving on water alone. While our day had consisted of sitting in different terminals, and riding on planes, the Afghanistan sun is murderous. In my opinion, three hours outside in the sun is equal to an eight, or ten hour work day. It seems to just suck the life out of you.

Once we signed up for our flight, we headed across the street to the USO to see if we could get our hands on some snacks and something other than water. I ended up with a Tootsie Roll, a Dixie cup with three or four fritos, a cup of iced tea, a cup of coffee, and of course a bottle of water. Obviously this was not enough to satisfy my growling stomach, so we made the trek over to the chow hall. Aside from the dining facility that was built in Al Asad, Iraq in 2006, this place was definitely one of the nicer chow halls I had been to, at least as far as Afghanistan and Iraq are concerned. I made a wrap, grabbed another water, and we headed back to the terminal to prepare for final roll call. This is where we met a guy that I secretly named “Bayou Bill.”

The guy I was traveling with went outside to smoke a cigarette, so I went with to hang out and shoot the shit. This guy that had one of the worst back-woods, swamp logger, country accents that I had ever heard, came up to us to ask if we worked for the same company as him. From what I could decipher, he was on his way into Afghanistan for either his first time, or to start a new contract. Either way, it was nearly impossible to understand what he was saying. He was a very nice guy, and he seemed more nervous that anything, possibly about being in Afghanistan for the first time, or making sure he was where he needed to be on time. It could also have been a combination of both, but I definitely had a hell of a time figuring out what he was saying. We ended up establishing that he worked for a company that my company works along side of, so we set him up with some contact information for when he arrived at Sharana. Nice guy, nearly impossible to understand. Bayou Bill ended up more or less sticking with us for the rest of our time in Bagram. We all headed over to the terminal to grab our gear and pile on the bus that was to take us to the C-130. Off to Sharana we went.

Going from a place like Kandahar, to a place like Sharana, is sort of like living in New York for ten years and one day waking up in South Carolina. The differences between the two are so vast that you almost experience some sort of culture shock. The weather is different, the geography is different, even the atmosphere you feel is different. The moment I walked into the PAX terminal, I felt like an outsider. Kandahar is a base where people come and go as quickly as the weather changes, but Sharana seems to be comprised more of what could be considered “regulars” that people just passing through. While the base itself is nowhere near being small, it certainly has a small-town feel to it. Out of everyone that was on the flight with me, I am fairly certain that I was the only person that was visiting, or “passing through.” I felt like Joe Pesci in the movie My Cousin Vinnie.

While our information was being processed, the guy I was traveling with called the Site Lead to let him know that we had arrived so he could come pick us up. While we were outside waiting to be picked up, I noticed something very interesting. It was a little after 2100 at night, and a nice cool breeze was blowing at a constant rate, and the temperature was probably around seventy degrees. It was absolutely beautiful outside. Nine o’clock at night in Kandahar? It would still be a steady ninety degrees and unbearable outside. I must admit I was loving the weather.

Right about the time that our ride arrived, I noticed some guy walking away with my flak-jacket and my kevlar helmet. I walked over to him and asked him if he was sure that the flak and helmet he had was his, and in a broken, nervous, soft spoken voice he assured me that it was in fact his. Obviously it was not, so I explained to him that he had indeed grabbed the wrong one by mistake. He quietly argued with me for a moment, then he became very upset and scared at the thought of misplacing his gear. I must be honest and say that in his confusion, I slowly and quietly picked up my gear and walked over to the truck. Definitely a strange situation.

When I got in the truck, the most I got out of the guys that picked me up was a hello. Now, before I get into this, I want to say that I fully understand that when you work with a bunch of guys for an extended period of time that you get a little weird when someone new shows up. That was exactly what was happening. I was definitely an outsider, and I was definitely receiving the full outsider treatment. When we got to the site, the boss put me up in a living space, I unpacked my things, went to take a shower, and went to bed. Day one in Sharana was over, as was my twelve total hours spent waiting in PAX terminals for flights.

The following day I got going on my inventory. After the morning meeting, I met some of the other guys. To my surprise, my greeting was a little different than what I received the night before. I ended up finishing most of my work before lunch and went to eat with two of the older guys that worked at the site. One of the guys was 65 years old and going on his seventh year contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only had he been over here in a combat zone for close to seven years straight, be he was also a Vietnam Veteran. Yeah, wow is right. He also told me about the house he owns in Jordan and how he has no interest in going back to the US. Interesting guy to say the least.

Aside from the first day and getting my work done, my time has consisted of writing and helping some the guys with their computers. I must say I am enjoying sitting out on the porch outside of the office, writing, and enjoying the weather. Its so nice to be able to sit outside and enjoy the fresh air and a cool breeze. The one thing that gets me about this base is that it looks like the ghetto. Some of the areas are existing buildings and roads that were here before we made it a base and the roads remind me of alleys in the city. The buildings and walls are old and run down, and some of the work areas are lined by storage containers and old equipment. It is sort of strange walking around because it is a completely different feel and look than any of the other places that I have been so far.

So after being here for almost a week, I realize that I have done a lot of searching. Not soul searching, but really sitting down and thinking about what might come next. Late last week it started raining and continued well into the weekend. I was sitting out on the covered patio, smoking a cigarette (yes, I was smoking a cigarette), and enjoying the rain and I got to thinking. What is next? Really, what the fuck is next? Do I stay out here and work until this money runs out? Do I do a year, save what I can, and walk away? I finally have an answer for myself. I am going to stay. How long? I really can not say, but I need to be here, away from the world, and everyone in it. I realized that not only do I need to take advantage of the money and the opportunity that comes with it, but I need to grow as a person. I have nothing to give anyone but myself. Out here, especially the base that I am currently at, I have the chance to be alone and evaluate this shit they call life. I am making an insane amount of money, but I am also afforded the opportunity to focus on myself and what I want. That is exactly what I need.

So I sat there while the rain poured down and I realized how much I love this new hobby. A few years back I got in the habit of taking a camera everywhere I go so as not to lose the memory of the places I have been. Good idea, right? Think of this though: I could take a picture of the stormy landscape and at the end of the day, its a desert landscape with a cloud riddled sky. Now, if I told you that I could look down from these hills into the valley, the sun shining from the west, but a black storm cloud en-shadowing the city below. The smell of the wet dirt, the cool breeze, the sound of the first drops of rain as the clouds above finally burst and poured rain onto the hard, dry desert floor. I love to write. I may not do it every day, but when something touches me, when I feel something, it goes down on this white canvas to be remembered forever. Every single detail, all of the emotion can be relived in my words.

I think, finally, after all of these years, I have found my niche. There is no doubt that I need to be schooled in this art as to expand my abilities, but I think this is it. I can sit here, listening to music, and as I am writing, I can almost see what I am writing about.

I leave on Tuesday to travel to a new base, so you can bet your ass there will be more to follow, but for now, this is it. As always, thanks for reading and keep looking for more.

The last post was heavy.  There is no way around that.  The old portion was written while I was at rehab, not five months after my accident, and in the middle of the biggest emotional shit storm of my life.  I did not change that piece at all, so I apologize if it was difficult to read as far as spelling and grammatical errors.  I have to keep with the notion of telling it how it is, right?

This next old piece that I have to share is a little different.  One could say that it was written during a very confused and angry time during my life where I was not too sure what direction I wanted to go.  After re-reading it, I realized that while the last six or seven years of my life are definitely not full of flowers and butterflies and rainbows, I have done a lot of growing mentally.  My views and the way I look at the world around me seem to be closer to normal than they were at the time when I wrote it.  In a nut shell, I think I was just young and immature, but it is still interesting to see how I looked at things five, almost six years ago.

The piece is centered around my first deployment to Iraq, and the events leading up to it to include some earlier moments in my time as a Marine.  This piece includes some situations that like in the last post, may bring to light a view of a person that some of you have never known in me.  There are portions that discuss drug abuse, fighting, sex, and even some highly twisted views on the world and the place we all live in.  Like before, if this is something that you wish to stray from, please close this blog and wait for another post.  I do not change these old writings, and I will not change them.  They portray me in many different forms and lights and I like to look back on that so as to not forget where I came from.

So here it is, and again, this piece portrays a person that I used to be, and not the man that I have become.

———————————-February 2006?———————————————————————

The Untold and Uncut Story of the Year

Twenty-Nine…Iraq…The Hell We all Live in

By Carmen J. Cardinal

DRAFT

You wake up one day and realize that you in fact have not been asleep at all. The life you live is a dream. The land you cherish is all a façade. The virtues and values it expresses are just dust in the wind. Welcome to America. Do we all in fact live in the “Land of the Free?” A place where every living soul that expresses their enlightenment is in fact scrutinized for it? Men and women die for these things every day, but for what? Truly they have not died in vein; they believe they are fighting for something, something more than a country and its laws. Take history into account. Every war fought, ranging from The French and Indian war, to our current Operation Iraqi Freedom. What really has been gained? Obviously none of us would exist if it were not for the heroism displayed by the ones before us, but think of the losses. Individuals from other lands came to “America” in search for freedom, when in fact they became the very thing they sought to escape mere moments upon arrival. During the pilgrimages centuries ago, slavery ran rampant across the world, “our world,” the world that was “discovered” so as to abolish such acts. The day to day contradictions that occur in and of our great land are heinous and un-sat. Why would men and women want to defend a nation that is no better than the lands we fight in today? Why are men and woman of our “great nation” dying in far away lands for a cause that when up close and personal, unravels to become a mere power trip of our great leaders? The following is my own personal account of these horrors that we condemn ourselves to every day. I am in Iraq, fighting this pointless war and watching friends leave and not come back. For what? We shall see.

5:00 AM. The same thing day to day; the clothes, the shower, the toothbrush, and the same slop put into my mouth for what seems like an eternity. I can not be late. Why? Someone that is only a few years my senior, is ranks above me. I have a tracker to complete. A tracker: a document in spreadsheet format that contains the vital information of every individual in Combat Logistics Battalion 7. Social security numbers, blood types, did they go to the range? Did they get their gear? Do they know what the first aid kit with a lame, technical name contains? Yes. All this is my responsibility. Let us rewind this story a bit. I am a United States Marine. Yes, “the few and the proud.” I am a Network Administrator. I have been for almost two years now, and I have just recently embarked on my first deployment to fight in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Freedom…I laugh at the word. Now this “tracker” business does not sound like the meticulous process that goes into administering a network does it? The answer is no. Why? Well, there is a very explicit answer for all this: The Marine Corps. The commercials, the history books, and the men in blue that stalk the hallways of your local high school are all lies. Better yourself and be able to look in the mirror and know that you are the best of the best. Let us think about this for a minute. How can one be “the best” if one is not afforded the opportunity to do one’s job? The answer is you can’t. I stepped on Iraqi soil after being a fully trained US Marine for almost two years, knowing next to nothing about my job. How can this be, the Marines are the best!? Here’s the story. Well start with what I like to call the precursors to disaster. I turned twenty on May 4^th, 2006. We are going to rewind about eight months before that and talk about the days when I was a nineteen year old man that had no idea what he wanted in his life.

Being a US Marine stationed in Twenty-nine Palms, is similar to being at say…law school, meeting a girl and telling her you are studying to be a lawyer. Everyone knows you are a Marine, and no one cares. What do you do? You drink. You drink and you get drunk every night. What else is there to do? Spend money to go somewhere so that you can spend more money to drink in a different place? I talked earlier about “the best of the best,” the Marine Corps, “America’s 911 Force,” so why does everyone drink they’re life away? Not everyone knows or realizes for that matter why they do it. Normally it’s an emotional flaw that a person has where they feel that alcohol will make their sorrows go away. That is where the common person is sorely mistaken. Put yourself in a position where theoretically you and every person you answer to on a daily basis is brainwashed and has no concept of humanity and the nature of a human being to want to be free. Pretty messed up, huh? Wait; brainwashed? You spend ninety-three plus days in a place that could rival the pits of hell just so that you can earn the title Marine. During your three month visit to this hell you are exposed to every kind of person you could possibly imagine, from every corner of this sad lost country we live in. You are stuffed together, 100 plus in a room that couldn’t be used to work on a lawn mower because it is far too small, you get sick as can be and you are treated like the lowest of the low. Wait a minute. Let us stop right here.

The lowest of the low? A status that people put other people in; a verbal title that we feel we have the right to bestow on someone because of where they come from, or what they look like, or virtually whatever reason we feel necessary. This is fair how? One individual is “better” than another? Who has the power to decide this? No one does. It has been preached to the citizens of the US since its birth that a person has to strive to be better than the one next to them. But why? We shall be enlightened.

So you get your body ripped and torn to shreds every day, and every waking moment of your life for these ninety days, all for a title. You get shaped into what “they” think you should look, think, and act like. It is burned in your head that being in the military, the Marine Corps, that you are a better person than the civilians that surround you. Anyone that threatens democracy is the enemy, and it is your sworn duty to combat and protect that. I don’t know about you, but I don’t agree with that on any level. What constitutes a threat? Someone with a different idea? Someone that stands up and says our country is fucked up and in need of reform? Is the mere fact that human beings are born with a mind that is so complex and free that it can never be replicated or matched actually the enemy that “they” speak of? Who decides all this? It is simple. The men and women “we elect” to lead us, make these decisions and laws. So, when the hell was it decided that democracy and they way we (America) portray it, is the right and only way to lead and govern a nation of people? Sorry, I forgot, in the US Military your freedom of speech, thought, life, and every other fucking thing you can think of is limited. You have no opinion, and if you do, you risk confinement, loss of money, and pretty much anything else you could think up that would have a negative effect on you as a person in the military. At least as a civilian, you have the chance to get away from these types of things, but in the military you are no longer an individual, you are part of that machine.

Back to the drinking. You live day to day in a place that sucks; no grass, no trees no wildlife except for the ugliest of creatures, and you have to bow to the wishes of your “superiors” just to put the icing on the cake. Basically, like I said before, it’s Hell on Earth. You entertain yourself by drinking, partying, having sex with different people all the time, and generally wasting away to nothingness. You eventually will watch your self esteem wallow away to nothing, and your confidence will drop below zero. Yes, all of these things are generally the same brainwashing bullshit that I talked about before, like being confident and thinking highly of yourself all the time, but a person needs to hold some self virtue of they want to get away from the badness of the world. Joining the military was of course my own decision without a doubt, but hind sight is always twenty-twenty of course. All this partying and fucking and drinking and pill popping…oh yeah, I forgot about that. The past is the past and there is nothing a person can do to change that, so I hold no shame in revealing it. Drugs have more negatives than positives, of course, but as a growing teen I certainly am not afraid to say I indulged myself in my share. Marijuana is a great drug. There are a few others like mushrooms, but we’ll probably discuss all that later on. Anyway upon being in the Fleet Marine Force, I have been exposed to more fucked up things than I feel I ever would have been as a civilian. Valium, Vicoden, Percocet, Corociden (Triple C’s), Oxicoten, you name it; I’ve eaten or snorted it. Why? There really is no reasoning or excuses that can justify doing stupid shit like eating eighteen Triple C’s and walking around like a raptor for six and a half hours, but it passed the time and made me feel good. When I got in my first car accident with my stupid roommate, Matt, the entire right side of my brain was contused. I was on Valium, Vicoden, and Napercen for two weeks straight. Needless to say “take 1 every 16 hours orally” turned into “crush all 3 pills together and snort every few hours” pretty quick. Again no excuses, but certainly at the time I had good reasoning. I cheated death. A few seconds before the wreck commenced, I decided to click my seat belt, and the truck then rolled six times. Also, once again, what else did I have to do? I will not say the Marine Corps made me do drugs, because they frown upon such acts with the highest level of hatred, but I will say that I have been beaten to such a low standard that it “seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

So the word about Iraq starts to float around like some Sci-Fi disease and the rumors start. “Where are we going?” “Did you hear we’re stayin for a year!?” Like children on Christmas day. I will not lie to you and say I did not want to go fight. Sure I did, and I wanted it badly. Of course this all changes later when I actually get to this lame excuse of a war for freedom. The pathetic training starts and with that comes a level of bullshit I honestly did no think existed. Basically we go out to the field, and a few other Marines and I have to set up a network. Along with going out to the field with random other retards from all over the country comes with signing out thousands of dollars worth of gear for accountability. Of course, I have about fifteen grand worth of shit in my name, not to mention having to work with a bunch of people I have never met before and learned to not trust very early in the game. These dickheads decide that they have the right to go through my unit’s gear which is signed out in my name and walk off with it without telling me. The hell with the Lance Corporal right? He’s only a measly E3! Well if there is something I have inherited from my father it certainly is the fact that I don’t put up with bullshit from anyone rather it’s my best friend, or God himself. I stepped back and realized I’d surly get fucked by some other brainwashed idiot if I was “disrespectful” to one of these higher ranking individuals, so I was polite and tactful when I went in front of every Marine in the platoon. I told them that from now on regardless if it’s a pen, or a computer, if they wish to use my gear without my consent, they will sign it out in the log book. As history predicts, this doesn’t happen. I flip out. I threaten a female Sergeant with the slitting of her throat and the burying of her still breathing body in the middle of the desert, and tell the Lieutenant that I’m going to punch his teeth in, and so on. All this boils down to me getting hazed and mistreated. I get saved by some higher-ups in my parent unit, only so they can look good, and this all goes away

So, eventually things get a little better and it’s time to take some leave. See, unlike the civilian world where at least there is some level of humanity surrounding the work-place, the Marine Corps does not believe in days off or vacation. You earn two and a half days of leave per month. Oh joy…aren’t they nice!? So anyway I decide to take leave around the middle of December. My first stop is Philadelphia International Airport, where my best friend Wes picks me up. The flight is late, so I pretty much get fucked, seeing as in less than eight hours from my arrival, I have to be back at the airport ready to get on my flight to North Carolina to see my mother. Wes and I get stoned as hell and I make breakfast at 3 in the morning. Good times I know. Well basically after my travels with my mom and all that down south, I head back to charlotte to finally get back to Pennsylvania. When I finish my cigarette, I walk through the door to find myself surrounded by a bunch of brainwashed soldiers. Maybe I need to be a little more specific to get my point across. There is about 600 Army Soldiers in this terminal. It is absolutely insane. I walk up to a beautiful girl and I ask what the hell is going on. She says some lame-ass military word and all I take from it is leave after their specialty school. I ask her where she’s headed and she says Philly. Of course I’m fairly surprised and get rather excited. I then ask her where in PA is she headed, and she replies with “Reading.” I call her out on a possible lie, and she reassures me she’s telling the truth. Push comes to shove and I realize that not only did she graduate from a neighboring high school, but after looking at her plane ticket she’s sitting net to me as well. This is where love comes into the story. It was certainly love at first sight.

Love: The very thing that as a human being I would fight until I let out my last dying breath to conserve. If the world existed without love, there certainly would be no reason in living. Even when covered with the insane beliefs and worthless laws that govern the people that walk the earth, in the end, it’s all still worth it. After the woman who taught me what love was died back in October of 2005, I lost all faith in a higher power, faith in myself, and faith in love. I pretty much sat back and allowed my self to be sucked into the machine that surrounded me. America. The very place that people are supposed to be able to seek refuge and hope has become a fortress of hate. A lot of theories have been presented in reference to the Book Of Revelations in the Holy Bible. The second coming of the Lord Jesus, and the “epic” battle between God and Satan, is certainly a haven for argument. The idea that this “fight” will not necessarily be between two beings, rather immortal or mortal, but rather two nations is certainly believable. Truthfully, I believe America is Satan. What more proof could a person need to share my opinion? America is supposed to be a country based on the idea of freedom and the citizens of that country having more than just say in how the government works and the decisions it makes, when in fact a person is scrutinized for being free. Take a “hippie” for instance. Personally I think that is a bullshit term and enjoy “free spirited” a little more, but that’s besides the point. Aside from possible drug use, these people dress different, they live different, and they talk different. “Fuckin hippies!” How the hell is that fair? This goes back to love. If love was non existent, I believe it would allow for the full take over of this machine we call a country. I believe that love is probably the only subconscious weapon that people have to combat this bullshit. Think about all the argument about healthcare for elderly people and the sick and poor. If no one had love for these people, they’d most certainly get pushed under the carpet and forgotten all together. Love is the most powerful of weapons and I think a person that holds no belief in it is a fool. I fell blindly in love and my life was good for awhile. It sort of put the whole façade of the military and the corrupt government we have on pause. My mind was elsewhere for the time being.

I think I’ll put this whole year long story on hold for a minute so as to not lose the point of all this. Let’s get a little closer to the topic at hand. The US government is corrupt. We feel that it is our right and our duty to be the police of the world and try to fix everyone’s problems. Who really has problems? Honestly. I see activists on television literally crying about poor people in Africa because they do not have clothes and nice things and the luxuries that most of the world enjoys. Step back for a second and imagine yourself one of these less fortunate people. Maybe not less fortunate, but you lead a simpler and purer life without all the materialistic things the rest of the world “enjoys.” Someone snatches you up from your village or town and throws you in the US. Wow. Joy and happiness fills your body. You now have the chance to prosper and make a good life for yourself. But, the years pass and you start to learn more about the government and the rules that are placed before you. You realize that all the freedoms that were bestowed upon you are in fact vapor. How does this make you feel? You are watching TV and you hear a senator talk about not letting homosexuals into a park near your home. This hurts you because you have a friend that is a homosexual. Stop right there. Freedom of Speech? Where did that all go? Maybe it should be called freedom of speech as long as the government likes what you have to say. Ignorance is not bliss. Living and supporting a world that presents all these positive things, but snatches them right out from under you the second they get what they want, is ignorant and wrong. Now instead of living with the people and things you have always known and loved, you are stuck in a prison with invisible walls…while your family and friends are back in Africa living their simple pure healthy lives. Convinced yet? The best is yet to come.

Sooner or later the time to deploy finally comes. Fathers say goodbye to children and wives, friends say goodbye to friends, and I say goodbye to Brooke, which today seems like yet another precursor to disaster. From that day until I have lost more than I have ever bargained for. I lost a relationship with a father and I lost friends and I’ve now lost the woman that changed my life. Rest assured, we will hash all that out later. The night crawls to an end and seemingly, its time to say goodbye. I say my goodbyes to my friends and mentors, but the hardest one of all is saying goodbye to love. My mind knew that it would probably be short lived, because that’s just how things go, but even to this day, my heart still wants it to continue even after its bloody termination. I kiss her goodbye and get on that god forsaken bus. This is where it all begins; the experience that has opened my mind to these views and opinions that I share in these writings. The next three days are quite a blur, considering they consisted of about 15 percocet and valiums crushed up and snorted. I made a new friend those three days, Watson. Together, high as fuck on narcotics made snow angels in Germany and stared at each other in Kuwait. Again, how else does one cope with an internal conflict that they don’t understand or even realize exists? Pills. That seems to be the answer to a lot of things up until this point. Here’s where the bullshit starts. After wasting time in Kuwait for God knows what reason, we get on a C-130 that was used in the Vietnam War, and coincidentally, on the back rudder, it displays the Philadelphia Eagles football team logo and says Willow Grove AFB, Pa on it. This had to be a sign, because about ten minutes after I sit down, this pilot comes back and asks for the youngest Marine, which ends up to be me. I have never feared for my life the way I did when I sat in that cockpit riding to Iraq. Alarms going off, smoke coming from the instrument panel, you name it, it happened. I thought I was going to die. We get to Iraq and its dark. If I would have been still fucked up on narcotics I probably would have thought I was still in California. This place is certainly as lame and barren as Twenty-nine Palms. Maybe that plane should have crashed.

Now that I’m actually in Iraq, I get to actually see the bullshit that everyone sees on the news…or do I? I can promise you all that over ninety percent of what you see on the news is lies. All they show you is when us military members die, but have you ever seen the number of Iraqi men women and children that have perished by the sword of the US? No, you haven’t the number is in the tens of thousands. Let’s back up once again. Why did the US invade Iraq? Well, according to the mission statement back in 2001, we went over to fight the “war on terror.” Sure, there are terrorists in Iraq, but are you going to sit here and tell me there are not terrorists all over the world? We’re going to stand in a terrorist’s shoes for a minute. What is the definition of terrorism? Basically it says that it consists of hostile acts that are used to inflict fear on a group of people so as to get their ideals and ideas made known. Sure, this might not necessarily be the most accepted way to get your ideas out in the open, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the world doesn’t care because they are all happy with the status quo. No one is going to listen to a small group of people even if the idea that they present is a good one. So basically, these “terrorists” are merely ordinary people that have an idea that the rest of the world refuses to listen to, so they resort to violence and murder to make their voices heard. In my eyes it’s a shame that people have to resort to atrocities to get their point across to others, because no one will listen. Hold on, we’re straying from the point here. We entered this country to fight this “terror” but why the hell did we go after its leader. Isn’t the terrorist bin Laden?

Any way the days drag on and I do my job, finally. Working with computers and maintaining a network. Sure, it seems like a normal, easy job for someone who knows what they’re doing, but then you work in the variables. I sit here day in and day out and have to listen to people that aren’t even old enough to be my parents tell me what to do when they’re not even in my fucking job field. I certainly hope that the lack of logic here is apparent. A man with shinny insignia on his collar automatically knows more than the man with black insignia on his collar because the shinny man “went to college and became an officer.” These people don’t do a goddamn thing all day long, but will stop at nothing to make the life of the worker bees a living hell. Why do I deserve this? OK no we’re back to the whole “you signed the paper, you made the choice” thing. This is true, but I would have rolled that paper up and smoked something out of it if I had known that I would be sitting here two years later listening to a man that doesn’t know his asshole from his elbow. The training that a Communications Officer receives is the equivalent to what I could teach my sister in a day. All he does is for a few weeks get briefed in every job in the communications field, so he really doesn’t know much about anything. When a normal person realizes that they don’t know something, usually they will ask for help or ask how the task was completed. This guy doesn’t need to do that. He’s an officer so he knows everything.

Back on track here, I start to finally get a hang of how things work in a “war zone” and the importance of my job. Once again, we stop here. There are aspects of my job that are important to the success of our lame excuse for a mission out here in Iraq, but I have to say that most of the services I provide to these dumbasses out here are luxuries and are not required to send a convoy out to Baghdad. “My yahoo doesn’t work” “How come I can’t view the butt naked video of my wife?!” Yeah, like that shit is needed to complete a mission. These people out here wouldn’t survive without the help of me and the other Marines in my section. They’d probably all kill themselves because they are the equivalent of a fucking child straight out of a woman’s womb. Truthfully, considering the “reputation” that we are known for, it’s fairly surprising to know that these “leaders” are nothing without people like me. So I actually start to learn a few things that I actually care about, like the workings of a network and the devices that power it. It’s very interesting to me, and I suck up as much information as I can. Just when things are looking up, job wise, shit hits the fan and we start playing games. They wake us up at the most fucked up hours of the night, not by the request of the Marines already on shift (they don’t need help) but at the request of the stupid asses that are in charge of us. This kind of thing really isn’t that bad when taken in small doses, but when it’s two or three times a week is when it gets to a person. I can guarantee that there is not a person on this planet that enjoys working twenty-two hours a day. Basically, this little issue causes an extreme m amount of tension between the Marines in my section. When you put 13 eighteen to twenty-five year old males together, deprive them of sleep, and also add the “oooooh we’re Marines!” factor, problems start to occur. There begins to be a total loss of respect for each other and nothing gets done. We somehow end up surviving like this for weeks, but something happens that causes me to stop caring all together. This is how it goes.

A Staff Sergeant that shall remain nameless for now, organizes a working party that’s purpose is to consolidate all the wires and cables that are around the compound, old and new. Honestly, it’s a good idea, and although none of us want to do it, we go reluctantly and the working party commences. A guy that I’m friends with thinks it’s fucked up that I get picked to be the only data Marine on this working party, so he decides to join me out of his own free will. Things go rather smoothly for the first half of the day, and ****** and I accomplish quite a bit surprisingly. We take a break to get some food, and come back around 1 o’clock in the afternoon. It is hot as fuck outside. We start working again, and then decide about an hour into it that we need to take a break. We go inside this old building and lie down and chill for a couple of minutes. Of course, the SSgt walks in and flips out, calling us names and screaming at us like were animals and accuses us of sleeping, when all we were doing was laying down and smoking a cigarette. So this is where it all falls apart. Let’s look at this situation. As a leader, you are supposed to look out for your men first, and mission second. This never occurs in the Marine Corps, or the rest of the world for that matter, but that’s a different chapter. So here’s what you have: two Marines that have been working like dogs in the blazing sun all day one of which didn’t even have to be there, they decided to take a break and get accused of sleeping by some asshole that doesn’t deserve to be in charge of a janitorial staff at a fucking high school. This pretty much parallels the mentality that you see day to day with the US government. Seeing as we are the “police force” of the world, we see something that we think is wrong, rather it turns out to be as such or not, and we do what we think is the right thing to do when in reality we have no goddamned right to intervene anyway. As I stated earlier, this is where all apathy sets in. [end]

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I cut out the next part because it was an official, sworn statement that I had to write for an investigation, so I do not think it needed to be in my blog.  I am currently in the process of taking photos and gathering some information about the base that I am stationed at.  You should have read the entry about the city of Qalat, well this one will be about Kandahar.

Thanks for reading.

So I was digging around in my computer and external hard drive and came across some of my old documents.  I found some things that I had written as recently as 2010, and as old as 2005.  I must warn anyone reading and tell you that some of the things you will see over the next few days are graphic, as well as the fact that they paint a picture of a person that you may have never known me to be.  There is writing of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, death, fighting, loss of life, Iraq…if you can think it up, it is there.

I will start with the darkest of my days.  While I was at the DoD Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Center in Point Loma, Ca, I wrote a blog for my MySpace that I had back then.  This blog contains some pretty gruesome details about my accident, my addiction to alcohol, and also shows my progression toward recovery.  This blog could also be construed as unfinished because it ends rather abruptly.  There are many errors in this blog that include punctuation, spelling, and grammar, but I think that I need to post it exactly how it was written almost 5 years ago.  Again, the following words are graphic, and they paint a very graphic picture of what I went through back in February of 2007.

————————————————-July?  2007————————————————-

I figured it was time to write about what has happened in the past 6 months.  I know there are plenty of questions from all of my friends and family concerning my current attitude and outlook on life, so I think it’s time to write about it.  I’ll start after Christmas of 2006 until now.  I must forewarn- I will not change the things that have happened to make them sound better or not as bad.  If it is graphic and detailed, it will remain as such.  Just be warned.  I’ve had a lot of time on my hands here at alcohol rehab (I will get to that much later) and I guess you can say I’ve been finding myself while I’ve been here.

Around the new year of 2007, I started to get back into my old ways.  I realized that I was fairly depressed and just generally not happy with the way my life was.  My anger issues that I thought were long gone came back with vivid color, my depression was back with such force I could not cover it with my usual facade.  I was certainly down and out.  I did not like what was going on.  I was upset with work and the fact that I really wanted to start my life and go to school and do all the things that I’ve been wanting to do forever, but realized that I couldn’t for the next couple of years because I was still in the marine corps.  I made that commitment…that “contract” to serve my country for 5 years, I know this, but the fact remains that I was ready to move on and do the things that I knew would genuinely make me happy.  I couldn’t.  I was faced with that great wall of the Marine Corps…a wall that was unbreakable and indestructible.  I had to finish my time.  Other things included the fact that I had little money after paying my bills every month, so I was living paycheck to paycheck.  Now that really didn’t bother me as much as other things that were going on but it was certainly detrimental to my mood and my general attitude towards the world around me.  I decided with the help of my father that I would go get some help and see if some anti depressants or some classes would help me with my mood and my emotions.  I saw the “wizard” later on about my problems, but there is a lot that happened before that.

Around the first week or so of January, two of my friends that I went to job school with and deployed to Iraq with, came to 29 palms for follow on courses for their job.  I was pretty excited for this because I really missed those guys and we always have a good time together.  One of them, John Rogers, came down to my barracks one night with his good friend Cody Wanoreck.  We got introduced and soon there after the 3 of us were hanging out on a regular basis and sometimes it was just Cody and I.  Cody and I had a lot in common, and we hung out just about every day.  We drank and watched movies and tried to pick up on girls around the base.  Of course that always fell through because we were a couple of idiots when we were drunk, but it was fun nonetheless. One Friday afternoon, I told Cody and john how I had to take a gray hound bus up to Auburn, Ca to meet with my aunt to pick up my car.  Oh yeah, my car broke down at Christmas, so I left it up there to get fixed.  John was being quite the homo and declined to come because he had to “talk to his girlfriend on web cam.”  Needless to say Cody and me gave him a hell of a hard time, but still john didn’t budge.  So Cody and me left without him.  We got drunk on the bus and eventually ended up in auburn sometime in the early afternoon hours the next day.  My aunt met us at the bus stop and took us to her house to get cleaned up and everything.  When we got there, Cody and me put my center console of my car back together, ate lunch, showered, and went to get my car washed.  We cleaned the shit out of it.  After the washing, I went and showed Cody the bridge that goes across the American river, right by my aunt’s house. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s the bridge that Vin Disel drove the corvette off of in the movie “XXX.”  I hauled ass across the bridge to the point my car hit VTEC and the sound echoed across the canyon.  It was cool as shit.  We turned around and headed out.  While we were leaving he asked if we could stop by his aunt and uncles house in Antioch, ca.  We sure did.  We arrived kind of late, around dinnertime and stayed to about 1030 pm.  From there we only drove a few hours towards base before we were both too tired to drive.  I’m not sure where we were at this point, but I remember we stopped at this dirty ass truck stop and slept for about 6 hours before I started driving again.  Around breakfast time, we stopped at a jack in the box in Bakersfield and had some breakfast and I called my dad to tell him where we were and let him know everything was going ok.

Soon there after, we got to Barstow, Ca, about 2 hours from 29 palms.  I stopped for gas and to get some water and snacks, and Cody bought a pair of these cheesy ass aviator sunglasses.  What a trip.  We took off down HWY 247, towards Yucca Valley, Ca.  A couple miles outside of Barstow, past this dump thing, is where my life changed. We were cruising along, and Cody was like “Let me drive dude” and I said, “No man I love driving this road.”  We jokingly argued for a couple minutes before he let up.  The road kind of goes up a little then down into the turn and on my left side of the road, there was a dry riverbed looking area, right off the edge, and a solid dirt wall behind it. My car started to over steer and I lost control and my car slammed into the wall and cart wheeled down the ditch.

I’m going to stop for a second and tell everyone that is reading this that, A. its not easy for me to write this right now, and B. its going to be graphic.

When I came to, I was bleeding all over the place.  I realized I was hanging up side down by my seatbelt.  I rubbed my eyes to rid them of all the sand and dirt, and said, “Fuck man…Cody are you ok dude?”  I got no answer.  I thought he was knocked out or something, but when I looked over at him, my heart stopped.  All I could see of Cody was his belly down to his feet.  His entire upper body was crushed between the dashboard, what was left of the windshield, and the ground.  I thought he was dead.  I scrambled to unhook my seatbelt, and when I got free of it, my shoelace was caught on the gas pedal.  I crawled out of the wreckage, up the embankment and flagged down the first car that came up on the accident.  The man called 911 and a second car stopped.  To my surprise, the man driving it was an Army Flight Medic.  He was on crutches.  He threw down his crutches and slid down the hill to assess Cody’s condition. He was still breathing.  I was a wreck.  A few more cars stopped and eventually the police, ambulance, and fire department showed up to cut Cody out of the car.  I remember being extremely upset at the fact that there were only a couple people trying to help get Cody out of the car.  The paramedics grabbed me and sedated me with oxygen and that’s when my memory ends.

I ended up getting 2 staples in my head and my Lieutenant came to pick me up and take me back to base.  Cody was life lighted out of the area to Arrowhead Medical center near Ontario,ca.  Cody died on the helicopter before he got there, but medical personnel revived him.

I was a wreck.  The next day john and I went to the hospital to see Cody.  When we got there, I almost couldn’t handle it.  Cody’s face was shattered from his teeth up to his forehead, his 2^nd vertebrae exploded, his 5^th vertebrae was fractured, 3 broken ribs and a punctured lung.  He only had minimal brain function at this point.  After spending days living at the hospital, john and me finally went home.

Cody passed away on February 16, 2007.  I will never forget him or that day.  I will never forget the good times we shared and the tears we shared together.  In the short time we knew each other, we developed a friendship that could have been mistaken for years.  Ill see you someday Cody.

Since all of this happened, I have started drinking heavily, my anger has went through the roof, and I pretty much don’t want to be alive anymore.  I have dreams a couple times a week about the accident, or me dying or me getting terribly hurt, and I just cant fucking get the sound of the glass and the metal breaking, and the car slamming into the wall, and the vision of Cody’s body lying there in the hospital bed out of my fucking head.  I never meant for anything bad to happen but my inexperience is the reason Cody isn’t here to day.  My misjudgment and my mistake are the reason why his life was lost.  I’ve come to terms with some aspects of it, but still in all, I struggle every day to keep going.  This is why I sit here at rehab in point Loma, ca.  I’m here to get help and to fix myself.

so here i sit… at rehab…broken…beat down… with nothing in front of me but improvment and hope…so i guess thats where i stand

rehab or not, one day ill be sharing a beer with cody and god… talking about the good old days

I have nothing more to say for now

I normally do not burden the world around me with things like nightmares and dreams, but last night was hell to say the least. Some of you who know me a little more than others may know about how bad I struggled after I got in my car accident in 2007. I reached rock bottom in a matter of a few short months and ended up in level three alcohol rehab. While there I participated in small group and one on one counseling where it was determined that I may suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of the seventeen symptoms of PTSD is recurring, vivid nightmares of the traumatic event. Welcome to my world of sleep.

My nightmares started shortly after the accident and were so vivid that four years later, I can describe three or four of them in great detail. There are a few that I do not think I will ever forget. For months I did not sleep a single night without reliving that day in one way or another and it eventually got to the point where I chose alcohol as my venue of escape. When I went to sleep wasted, I did not remember my dreams. Obviously this eventually became a serious issue since the drinking bled over onto the guilt side of things, but truth be told, it served it’s purpose for a while.

While I rarely have nightmares today that are specific to the car accident, an entire new monster was born after my last deployment to Iraq. I never thought I had suffered from any sort of combat stress until a team of neurologists established the fact that I did indeed suffer from PTSD relative to my deployments. I should add that I was seeing these neurologists for my Traumatic Brain Injury, or TBI when they decided to evaluate me for PTSD. See my issue was the fact that I felt completely normal for a long time, as well as feeling as if nothing really happened on my deployments. I guess that is why I am the patient, and they are the doctors.

Close to a month after making the transition from military to civilian life, I entered an entirely new realm of bad sleep patterns. On top of my terrible smoking habits, as well as my gaining a ton of weight, I was barely sleeping. I started having the most lucid, horrible dreams I had ever had in my life. Nightmares that I still have, that I will never forget, had me waking up screaming and sweating, and I even gave my ex girlfriend a fat lip while I was asleep from flailing my arms in distress. I experience some of the most horrible shit I can ever fathom, every night I close my eyes. I will not relive these dreams here on this blog, but I will tell you about last night.

Last night started out rough from the get go. I had layed down with every intent on falling asleep early and catching up on a few hours, but ended up staring at the ceiling for close to three hours before I finally drifted off. I do not remember anything from the dream except for the fact that I was laying in bed, here in Kandahar, when either a mortar, or a rocket, hit in our maintenance yard. I want to sa it was something a lot larger than an 81mm mortar or a rocket, but I really do not know. I got up and saw that my roomate was not here in the can. The only place he ever goes at night is to the bathroom, out in our maintenance yard. He and every one else had been hit in this explosion. I started to scream when I felt another hit and woke up. When I awoke, I could not tell if we had really been hit or not, or if I was really awake. I started to panic and could not figure out where I was. That is the last thing I remember.

I ended up working all day today feeling strange. I felt like there was a chance that I was still sleeping until I asked my boss if we had been attacked the night before. I walked around all day feeling weird and almost…violated. I know it sounds crazy, but it is the absolute truth. This is definitely the worst I have felt after a nightmare in a long, long time. I honestly fear going to bed tonight because I do not want to face whatever horrors await me.

Every night, every time I close my eyes, nothing but terror is there to greet me. It never fails.

Thanks for reading…sorry it was not a happy post.

There comes a time where every person must close the current chapter in their life, and start a new one. For some, this might mean a graduation, or maybe a new job. This conclusion could mean a fresh and new relationship, or ending an old one. For me, this life that I am living is not a new chapter, for I look at that as an extension of something familiar and old. This life is the start of a new book, and for that notion I must thank a very dear friend of mine.

This young woman that I know has graced the walls of this blog before, but this time is a little different. I have known this woman for a good portion of my life. I think you could say that we started knowing each other before we could even be called a young man, or a young woman. I have seen many sides of her over the years from the head-strong pain in the ass she was in my eleventh grade chemistry class, to a young aspiring model. I am no stranger to change, or hardship, even loss and failure. The one thing that is very new and strange to me is the notion of overcoming these harder parts of life. Not this young woman, not at all.

She would tell you today that she is starting to get a handle on her life, that she is moving on from the old, and diving head-first into the new and exciting. She may even deny this new book in her life all together. The one thing that is unmistakable and downright inspiring is her acknowledgment of things in herself that she knows she can improve upon. When I said I was no stranger to shoveling the shit life likes to throw at us from time to time, I meant it. I have had to face many things that people go their entire lives without even thinking about. The difference between her and I is the fact that she has grace. While I may have made it through these so-called hard times, I usually end up crashing through to the end and holding on for dear life. This woman can wake up and say she wants to make a change in her life, and then she just does it. I must also mention the fact that she does it with a smile on her face.

This person that I speak of has battled everything from a broken home, to heartbreak, loss, even disease. Yes, disease, and a chronic, incurable disease at that. She has taken all these things life has thrown at her, crushed them into tiny little pieces, and let them float away in a cool breeze of a spring morning. Yes, that sounds a little corny, but damnit if it is not the truth. I on the other hand take things like alcoholism, successfully complete a month of level three in-patient rehab, and white knuckle the next 428 days without a drink. No AA, no groups, I just held on for dear life and took it day by day. Everyone is different, there is no doubt about that. From the way we look, down to the way we handle things in our lives, we are all different. What sets people like this young woman I am speaking of apart from the rest, is that she is inspiring. Yes, there are days where enough is enough, and the tears start pouring, but this is someone that halfway through a phone call, has already picked herself up, established the details as to why she is where she is, and has come up with a plan to make the changes she feels she needs to make. I for one have always been the destroy everything and hope I can figure it out before it is too late type.

My point in all of this is that in talking with her tonight, she mentioned the title of this post. She told me that she is amidst figuring her life out, getting back on track after numerous doctor visits as well as a terrible relationship, and starting not a new chapter in her life, but closing the book and starting an entirely new one. That is exactly where I am right now. I have closed out a chapter that while full of heartache and other undesirable moments, is also full of experience. I said it before and nothing has changed, we are where we are not because of the path that lies ahead of us, but because of the path that lies behind us. For the first time in my life, I can truly say with confidence that I have the world at my finger tips. I have risen from the ashes of a failed relationship, a failed life plan, bad health, bad habits, and I now stand a different man with goals and aspirations. I have changed the way I look at the world, as well as the situations that are presented to me every single day. I have learned patients, as well as appreciation for those who have helped guide e to where I am today. For the next ten months I will continue to make a lot of money, new friends, new connections, and continue to rack up the life accomplishments. I have decided that I want to go to school for journalism and focus on English and writing. I will move back to the greatest city in the entire world, I will continue to be a good man and a good friend, and I will continue to move forward.

She has her grace, I have my new found determination. Both approaches work, and they work well. Time is finally on my side because I have finally caught up with my shadow and I have left it behind me.

As always, I will not use anyone’s name in my writing, but know that if you happen to be as lucky as I am to have a friend like her to emulate, you damn well better hold onto that.

Thanks for reading, and until next time…

So I touched on what has changed in the past few months emotionally, so now I will look a little towards the future.  The truth of the matter is that I have no idea what I want.  when I am done in Afghanistan, I will have the ability to look toward many more opportunities from a new monitary standpoint.  I will be able to get my own place and not have to depend on finding a friend or a roommate, let alone live with a girlfriend.  That in itself will be an entirely new experience for me.  See, while I may have left home right out of high school and joined the Marines, I have never truly been on my own.  My living arrangements were handled for me while in the Marines, and when I got out in 2009, I moved into an apartment with a roommate and of course ultimately with my girlfriend at the time.  So, in my eyes at least, I have never truly been on my own.

I am fairly certain that at least at this point, Philadelphia is the only place for me.  I love that city for a multitude of reasons, but one of the most important to me is opportunity.  Finding some sort of work in the city is far easier than in less rural places and the convenience of being close to everything is an obvious plus as well.  Socially the city is fantastic due to the fact that there are a thousand different things to do at a million different places, and being able to hop on the subway, or catch a cab makes going out to do something or meet friends somewhere that much more appealing.  I like the idea of being able to come home from work on a Friday evening, invite a few friends over  for drinks or dinner, and them not having to worry about driving or parking.  The parking situation in the city is a double edged sword in my opinion.  Since parking is such an issue, people are less inclined to drive somewhere and worry about finding parking, so having friends over for a little while, then heading out to the subway to go to a bar, or a baseball game becomes instantly better than arranging transportation every time you want to go somewhere.

Even though some may consider this a waste of money, I have been looking at places to live right downtown in center city. I need to be in the middle of it all. I have of course been looking at places everywhere in and around the city, but finding an awesome apartment in Rittenhouse Square, or down off of Locust Street seems to appeal to me a lot more and keep with my plan of living IN the city.

Now for the million dollar question of what I want to do. I want to go to school. That is for certain. My issue is what I want to do. The more I write, the more I want to be some sort of writer, but I know that making a living as a writer is all about catching a break, which is hard in this world. Writing is just like any other art form in the sense that a writer needs to find an audience just like a painter or a photographer does. Finding a substantial audience that is not only interested in your work but understands it seems like a very difficult task. I know it is not impossible, but I feel like a successful writer is harder to come by than a successful painter. Why? A painter or a musician, even a photographer has more than one form of media to connect with their audience on. What I mean is that a writer needs to catch a person’s interest with words, and the way those words are written, as well as the way those words feel and what they are about. A photographer for instance may specialize in landscapes, so the photograph the mountains in New York, or the beach in Maryland, and maybe even the skyline of Atlanta. Right there they have reached three different people. A person who likes the beach can be just as interested in the photographer’s work as the person who loves the mountainous countryside of up-state New York. If I write about baseball, I will most likely not reach out to many hockey fans.

My point is that while I am really starting to enjoy writing as a way to express myself, it seems hard pressed to find something out there that will draw enough interest for e to make a living, especially when there are already so many accomplished writers out there. This obviously holds true to the other art forms I spoke of, but I feel like developing a unique style is far more difficult to do on a blog or in a newspaper than it would be when considering what a photographer can do to set themselves apart from the rest. I guess my point in all this would have to be the fact that I feel like I’ve finally found something that I really enjoy, but I have yet to find a way to apply it to the world outside and make a living off of it.

That is where I currently sit with my future.  No clue, really.  I guess I could say I have an idea, but the last time I checked, ideas didn’t pay the bills.  I think that once I spend some more time out here, I will have had more time to calm my mind and really think about what i want to do.

Thanks for reading.

Part I

I have officially been living and working in Afghanistan for two months now. Ten months left on my contract. I already feel that I have accomplished so much personally as an individual, even after only two short months. While of course I am twenty-five years old and spent five of those years in the US Marine Corps, I almost feel as though I have grown more as a man out here than I did while I was a Marine. I acknowledge that I still have much growing to do, and by no means am I satisfied with the changes I have made in my life, but I am happy with what I have done so far.

Just over three months ago I thought the world was coming to an end when my relationship at the time came to an end. In a way, that statement is not so far from the truth. The reality of it is that my world really did crumble and cease to exist, my world at the time that is. Once a person gets past the guilt and anger that they experience after any kind of loss, they are able to look at what has happened from an entirely different view, almost as if they were looking at it through someone else’s eyes. I have since learned this.

Once I moved past the “loss” aspect of my situation, I was able to see things for what they really were. While at the time I thought the way my life was, and the people that were a part of it, was the only way it would ever be. There was a time where I could not fathom my life being different in any way. The girl, the house, the crappy job, all of it at the time seemed to be the only way. Then it all went away. The relationship ended and I moved in with my father and step-mother three weeks before coming out here to Afghanistan. Obviously after being on my own since I graduated from high school, being a Marine for five years, deploying to Iraq twice, and being in a committed relationship for almost three years, this was not exactly in my plans for life. Being on my own and living with someone, then living with my parents out of the blue is a pretty tough transition. It definitely had the feeling of “failure” written all over it.

I love my job, I love the people I work with, I love the fact that when this is all over, I will be faced with the most literal representation of the expression “the world at your fingertips.”  I can do whatever I want, go wherever I want, and be whatever I want to be and I can not express how refreshing of a feeling that is.

My point in all of this is actually pretty simple when taking the past three or four months into consideration. I had a view of what I thought my life could be, and at the time, that view was a reality. After getting over the massive change that happened almost overnight, I realized that my life was in fact not what it could be. I have changed more in two months of being away from the world than I did in three years of being in that relationship. I have grown up as far as learning patients, as well as compromise. I have also met a lot of new people whom I have very quickly grown to respect, as well as reunited myself with old friends. I have once again opened my eyes to new things, and opened myself up to new people. I have become a healthier person physically and mentally, and can say with confidence that I am a good, caring, and dependable friend.

The saying out with the old and in with the new, holds true to life in so many ways. I though that I had reached the peak in what my life could be, but after having lost what I thought meant so much, and realizing now that it did not mean what I thought it did, I have grown to see much more of what this world has to offer, and what I have to offer the world. I have to thank a lot of you for not only pushing me, but pulling for me as well. I know I did the hard part of moving past the guilt, anger, and confusion of it all, but I can not say that I was able to do all of this on my own. You know who you are.

A few pictures from the day yesterday:

This will be a short one, but I feel a strong desire to “toot my own horn” here for a second.  About four months ago I was in the worst shape of my life.  I wouldn’t doubt that if a complete stranger saw me walking down the street, you couldn’t pay them to believe I was ever in the Marine Corps, or have done anything athletic what-so-ever.  May 1st 2011 I weighed in at 265 lbs.  I am between 6’ and 6’1” so 265 lbs is quite disgusting to say the least.  Unfortunately the next portion of this story is now dead and gone, but after my last relationship ended, I decided to reach out to an old friend.  This friend in a way pushed me to better myself, for myself.  I quit smoking May 10th and haven’t had a cigarette since, as well as got myself down to the low 220’s weight wise.  I came out to Afghanistan wearing size 40/32 pants…and the 32 is definitely the length, not the waist.  Now 36’s are falling off my ass, or lack there of.  Heres where I was a year ago, which is pretty similar to where I was May 1st:

Yeah, I was disgusting.  So since May 1st I have done very well with eating right, and I do exercise when I am no completely worn out and destroyed by the Afghan heat.  This is where I am at now

Yep.  Only one chin…HA

So there it is.  If I can do it, I’m fairly certain that anyone can do it.  90% of my change has been due to just eating right and of course not pigging out at 0200 in the morning.  Excrucionating heat probably has something to do with it as well as several Monster “Absolute Zero’s” and a few cups of coffee along with a thermogenic every day.

More to come.

A lot have things have changed for me in the past three months, most notably my view on the importance of surrounding myself with good people.  I would be a liar if I said this so-called change in my daily outlook wasn’t sparked by the demise of my last relationship, so of course I will give credit where credit is due.  When something that you have had by your side, or something that you have had throughout your daily life for long period of time suddenly goes away, you are forced to appreciate things in a different light.  For me that light was true friendship.  Not the person you can call to head out to a party, or lend you five dollars, but a real friend.

Like some re-ignite a long lost love, over the past couple of months, I have re-ignited some friendships that I had long forgotten.  Those who know me, have more than likely heard me say on more than one occasion that I have no friends.  For a time, this was true, but it was also by my own hand.  While I was in my relationship with my ex-girlfriend, I slowly let those people who had meant so much to me, slip away.  As I said before, recently I have re-ignited some of these relationships and I can happily say that some of these people were still standing there, right where I had left them when I decided to vanish from the face of the Earth.  I have been given so many second chances over the past few months that I can not be more grateful for.  This is me, saying thank you.  When a person can walk away and forget about those who have long stood as a person’s lifeline, or their “rock,” come back and those people are still there…they are called friends. 

There are friends, and there are friends.

Through this second chance, I have become closer to some people than I have ever been in my entire life.  One of those people is a young woman whom I have known in one way or another, for a good portion of my life.  She recently has been letting the grayer side of life get to her, and frankly, with good reason.  Some things are not easy, nor will they ever be, but I couldn’t be more proud to know her, and what she has overcome in her life.  Today in talking with her, I was taken back to a darker time in my own life.  Again, this goes back to those friends who were there all along and when I needed them the most.  Almost five years ago, I fought, and destroyed alcoholism in my own way.  I drank to forget and thankfully I was given sixteen thousand different second chances to realize that my medication wasn’t working…booze, that is.  This friend of mine found herself very close to that same edge that I dove head-first off of almost five years ago.  I am fairly certain that this instance was nothing short of isolated, but it forced me very quickly to remember where I had been.  This leads me to mention something I had said to her to help her pick herself up:

Never forget where you came from, especially when you are standing at a wall, because when you remember what you’ve done, that wall becomes a staircase

Oh how I wish someone would have said this to me so many times.  I really hadn’t thought about it until after I had said it, and re-read what I said.  It really couldn’t be more true.  I bring this up because it definitely stands very close to what I said about the difference between a friend, and a friend.  I had pushed the world away and forgotten those that who have at times carried me, cleaned up after me, and even wiped my tears.  So many of us all too often get caught up in what we are doing and where we are and fail to give credit to the path that lays behind us.  My path is full of people who have been there, standing right next to me, as well as watching from the sidelines.  Either way, they have been there the entire way.  To forget where you have been, is to forget who you are…because you are where you are not because of the path that lies in front of you, but because of the path that lies behind you.

This is not just a thank you to the friends who never left, even when I did, but a lesson…remember where you came from.